


Fight or Flight

by shadowolfhunter



Series: McGarrett's Girl [1]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Children, Confusion, Dysfunctional Family, Honour, Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-04-16 20:51:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4639791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowolfhunter/pseuds/shadowolfhunter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny is the family man. Steve is the lone wolf. He has issues, he knows he does. Navigating the lies and the misguided protection of both his parents has left Steve and his sister Mary profoundly messed up. So nothing has prepared him for this, and anyway, what's one more betrayal amongst so many?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Child

Steve rakes his hands through his hair, he’s at a loss because this situation is nowhere in his playbook of SEAL maneuvers, he’s out of inspiration and truth is, it doesn’t matter because this is Steve’s private personal hell and he literally has no clue what to do about it. If it weren’t for his best friend he thinks he would have run by now.

Danny has always been there for Steve. Regardless. He’s backed Steve through incarceration, through Steve’s disastrous missions to Korea and Afghanistan, he has literally saved Steve’s life. He has argued with him, fought with him, and beside him and every single time Steve has turned around, Danny has his back.  
Now all Steve can do is turn to Danny and hope that this isn’t the straw that breaks the camel. 

Danny has a broad strong back that currently bearing the weight of another pain that he wishes that Steve didn’t have to go through, because there is no delicate way to say this.

If there was any way of pulling this weight, this burden away from Steve, Danny would.

“How didn’t I see this coming?” Steve’s voice is quiet, defeated. Danny really hates that, because he knows that there is no way that Steve would have… could have possibly known, and he hates that he has no clue how to help Steve through this.

“How could you have known, Steve?” He has to say something, better to lead with a question. “You said yourself, you were very young, it was your very first posting, you had three nights together and then she was gone.”

“I have a daughter, Danny.” Steve’s voice trembles and breaks on Danny’s name.

He puts his arm around Danny’s shoulders, burrows into Danny's shoulder, and Danny yanks him against his body, so Steve can fold around him. Like a blanket. A very insecure blanket.

Steve leans into his best friend’s shoulder, because right now Danny is the glue that is keeping him from flying apart. “How do I even...” Danny can scarcely hear the words, he hears the pain though.

Everything that Steve knows about family love comes from Danny and his Grace. He knows that Grace is the warmest-hearted, most generous girl in the world. Melody Jones... who knows.

Steve just wishes he had ignored Denning and not taken the case.

But Francine Jones had died in front of a number of the islands’ good and great, and Denning wanted answers fast.

It was bad enough when Steve saw the face of the dead woman, a memory of a night long ago, when a 22 year old Midshipman ran into a beautiful girl on shore leave. Worse when elimination prints and DNA had revealed that Lieutenant Commander Steven J McGarrett had enough alleles in common with one of the prints to be a close familial match.

That the fiery brunette seventeen-year-old girl that had stormed out ten minutes ago was Steve’s and Francine’s daughter. And maybe a very real murder suspect.

Steve hangs on to Danny, pulling his friend in close, Danny is quietly damning Francine Jones to hell in his head, because there is no way that this is not going to have a serious and possibly devastating backlash. 

His shirt is growing damp at the shoulder, and Danny’s heart breaks a little here because Steve McGarreet is a genuine tough guy with a heart of gold and he shouldn’t have to be going through this. He’s suffered enough mistreatment and profound loss at the hands of his family. That this long ago girl took something so precious and kept it from Steve is bad.

Perhaps worse even than Doris.

They stand like that a long time.


	2. Fear and Loathing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve goes after his daughter.

Melody is pissed off. She has been her mother’s daughter for seventeen years, long enough to love and despise her mother in equal measure.

She loved her mother, for her beauty, her grace, her uniqueness; but Melody had a hefty dose of practicality from somewhere, she guesses her father, and her mother’s ability to explode the conversational hand-grenades and then watch for results, the qualities that made her mother a complete liability, and now apparently Francine Jones has had one more grenade to explode and since she clearly planned everything except the dying part, Mel’s in this mess up to her neck.

She’s not stupid. She’s seen the picture her mother kept, up until now she’s kept a low profile, but he’s her father, and she’s seen enough cop shows to know that all those tests they run, he’s going to know that too.

Now he does. And she doesn’t know where that leaves her… except up Francine’s creek without a paddle.

The father she’s dreamed about since she was five years old and found the strip of pictures in her mother’s bag. The picture she snipped and hid among her belongings, the picture she’s carried from job to job as her mother roamed with the Cirque for almost all of Mel’s life. The home she makes in her heart for her father and herself, the one that’s settled some place, … well all of that is up in smoke.

Mel climbs, she doesn’t care that the silks are a crime scene, she needs up there, up where she can think. The music is in her head, not her routine, not even her mother’s routine, but something she’s been working on for weeks, something that is all hers. It’s daring, experimental, and Francine would have hated it if she had known or seen, because Francine was supposed to be the star of every show, and Mel was smart enough to realize it.

This is where she loved her mother, above the ground.

She swings into her moves, she’s flying, pushing herself, she needs this.

From the ground Steve watches. He doesn’t know what to say, but perhaps there is something he can do. He toes out of his boots, and reaches for the silk.

He climbs steadily, his lithe movements mirror his daughter’s if he did but know it, he’s so aware of her, he hasn’t noticed Danny and Chin below.

Danny watches his friend, watches the girl, “… a true chip off the old block,” he turns to Chin. The older man nods. “She’s McGarrett’s girl, even if you didn’t have DNA,” he indicates father and daughter far above the ground.

Danny bites his lower lip, thinking.


End file.
